Leaving Town? Drop Off Your Knives to be Sharpened

Yesterday Sara Kate posted a great how-to on sharpening your knives at home. If you have the tools, it's easy to do. But just like there are people who prefer to buy pizza dough rather than make it from scratch, there are some of us who prefer to leave our knife sharpening to the pros. The only problem is that we miss them while they're gone. Here's one solution—plus a slew of sources...

We have very few, very essential knives, so being without them is a hassle. What if we need to slice an onion for dinner?

But we have quite a few weekends away on the books this spring and summer. So we're planning to take our knives to Broadway Panhandler in Greenwich Village on our way out of town. They take two days, which means our knives will be ready to pick up when we get home. We're on vacation, our knives are on vacation... Everybody wins!

There are some places that will sharpen while you wait. The old-school knife grinding guys who drive around NYC neighborhoods clanging a bell like the ice cream man are one option. You can read about them here:

Joanna says there are similar trucks in Chicago. Dana says there are knife sharpeners at many of the farmers' markets in San Francisco. You can drop off your knives, do your shopping, then pick them up.

Here are more suggestions from our contributors, based on where we all live. This list is by no means complete, and we'd love to hear about the best sources in your city. Add them in the comments, please, so we can compile a more comprehensive list.